Chapter 170: The Isaacites’ New Year
The Isaacites’ New Year was quite miserable and quiet.
Indeed, on the first day of New Year, they blew the horn made from rams’ horns three times, recited scripture three times, and while gathering with family, ate apples dipped in honey to pray for a sweeter future, ate red pomegranate to thank God, and ate fish heads to ensure their work or industry could take the lead.
In the afternoon, they also left the city one after another. By a small lakeside outside Bethlehem, they prayed while throwing things from their pockets into the lake, symbolizing that they had confessed their sins and discarded them.
However, in the past, what they threw away were always large pieces of bread. Some Isaacites would even throw away spices, gold coins, and jewels. They generously threw these precious things into the bottomless lake, as if their souls were also liberated thereby.
But in the eyes of Christians, this behavior was extremely abhorrent and turned their previous good deeds into a joke.
“They did give us bread, but they used that bread to throw into the water, and in greater quantities than what they gave us.” Christians among the poor who had been spying on them said indignantly.
But this was indeed the doctrine of the Isaacites and what the “sages” required them to do. But at the beginning, they would only put sand, stones, and such things in their pockets, but somehow, this behavior turned into showing off. The more precious the things thrown away, the more respect and trust that person would easily gain from other Isaacites.
Afterward, whatever business he did would be smooth sailing and go exceedingly well. Even if he went bankrupt due to an accident and fell to pennilessness, there would be plenty of people willing to lend him money.
Someone saw Haridi also standing by the lakeside, but what he threw into the lake was just a lump of hardened mud.
The man immediately showed displeasure: “Haridi, what are you doing?” he reproached. “Do you think your soul is only worth this lump of mud?”
Haridi glanced at him, did not answer at all, and silently walked past him. That man was also a goldsmith, but his craftsmanship and imagination could not compare to Haridi’s. He had been somewhat jealous of Haridi originally, and now he had found a handle.
He reached out to grab Haridi for a good debate and to mock his poverty and stinginess, but he was immediately grabbed by his friend nearby. “Don’t stir up trouble at a time like this,” his friend said in a low voice.
Everyone knew that Lego and the others had offended the lord. After the former and several others were escorted back to Bethlehem, they were forced to confess their crimes to every person who had received their charity, and then they were whipped.
That night, several people developed high fevers, and even one person unfortunately died as a result. They could not even come to the lakeside in person to complete this ceremony, but had their wives and sons do it on their behalf.
“It’s all their fault. I said from the beginning that this scheme wouldn’t work. Whether Christians or Saracens, they wouldn’t even give us a proper look. They despise us, loathe us, and want to hang us on wooden frames when they see us.” An Isaacites merchant complained in a low voice. “We’ve already lost so much money, and Lego went mad, trying to scheme against our new lord with that little bit of money.
Now you’ve seen it too. The result is that our sages were hanged, and Lego and his accomplices didn’t meet a good end either.
By the way, have you heard? Lego’s son-in-law Jacques, although he is a Christian, was also implicated. Though he wasn’t whipped, he was expelled from Ayyarasa Road. Do you think their family can continue in Bethlehem?
If not, their business—I mean soap, wine, and olive oil—we should at least try to take a share or two.”
“This isn’t a simple matter. Come to my house tomorrow, and then I’ll have my wife entertain you well, and we’ll discuss it further.” Another merchant said this.
Haridi was already far away from those people by now, but his keen hearing and the whistling wind still carried these malicious and vile words to his ears.
He was not afraid of jealousy and threats from his peers.
He belonged to the Hermit sect. What would surprise others was that among the Isaacites, those who followed this sect might really be mocked for being too pedantic and unreasonable, but all Isaacites acknowledged that they were the purest branch among the descendants of Isaac.
Although they did not promote it, they would still keep the Isaacites of the Hermit sect as the most important trump card hidden away.
The places where the Hermit sect gathered would have Isaacites caravans periodically visiting to see them and do business, providing things that could not be produced in those remote places.
They would even select the smartest children from time to time to send over, to see if they could become students of one of the sages there.
For stubborn people like Haridi, they certainly would not get too close to him, but they would not casually harm him either, unless there was sufficient interest or a life-and-death moment. Just like what he encountered in Damascus.
However, what chilled him more was the schadenfreude in those people’s words. Lego had indeed done two stupid things in a row, but it was not his idea alone, and he had no way to control all the Isaacites. Whether it was raising gold coins to ransom their lord, or aiding the poor in the lord’s name, these were decisions made after prestigious and influential Isaacites gathered in the synagogue to discuss.
Lego and those exposed Isaacites did not name them, or rather, their crimes were not yet worth the lord pursuing, but this could not be a reason for them to kick them when they were down and swallow up Lego and the others’ industries.
This was perhaps why Haridi ultimately abandoned his teacher’s entrustment and did not use those secretly hidden ancient scrolls as a stepping stone to return to the secret place in the desert. They were the ones expelled, as failures— the overt and covert struggles and scheming there were no less than in Bethlehem or Ayyarasa Road. Just thinking about it filled him with disgust for that place.
He would rather wander everywhere and quietly spend the rest of his life in cities of Saracens or Christians than return there, even if those ancient scrolls could make him a guest of honor among them. They would certainly immediately forget how severe the accusations against him had been and joyfully accept him. He would become a sage. They might still have conflicts, but the worst outcome would merely be imprisonment.
After Haridi returned to his workshop, he sat dazed for a long time. The apprentice assigned to him by the Isaacites’ synagogue came to his side and worriedly asked if his master had encountered some unbearable difficulty.
They were all children of Isaacites, and their parents and elders did have some weight and could speak in the synagogue, but Haridi just raised his eyes slightly. “I’m fine, just thinking about an order from a customer.”
The children immediately widened their bright round eyes. “A new order?” one of the slightly older children asked excitedly. “Christian or Isaacite?”
“A Christian. But he is generous and not a harsh fellow. It’s just that the thing he wants is extremely, extremely intricate. I can’t have you help with this. After New Year, if anyone wants to visit me and hopes I can make something for them, you help me politely refuse. In the coming days, I’ll be spending them all on this order.”
He said this, and the two children became even more curious. But in the workshop, the master was equivalent to the students’ parents—no, the master of slaves.
In this era, whether Christians, Saracens, or Isaacites, if parents sent their child to be an apprentice under a master, they had to sign a written contract.
The contract stated that so-and-so voluntarily handed his child so-and-so to a certain master, and for a period of time, he must completely obey his master’s commands. His master could scold him, beat him, and drive him at will. Even if the child unfortunately died, their parents had no right to pursue it.
After the child reached adulthood, or the day the master deemed him able to work alone outside the workshop, he still had to work for his master for free for eight, ten, or fifteen years.
It could be said that once becoming an apprentice, the child’s future was almost firmly controlled in the master’s hands.
His master even had the right to sell him to another person as an apprentice.
Of course, Haridi would not do that; these two apprentices were his clansmen after all. But since he said so, the two children could only obey obediently, though their eyes were still full of curiosity.
“What could it be?” As they left the room holding candles, Haridi could still hear them muttering in discussion. “It must be a water clock.”
“It could also be a necklace.”
“Maybe a reliquary box, or maybe a crown.”
Haridi listened to their pattering footsteps gradually fading away and couldn’t help but show a faint smile. Children’s innocence was always quite comforting.
He returned to his workbench and shook the lamp stand above down a bit.
This lamp stand was also designed and forged by him himself, using several pulleys, and the crank had a latch to fix it, so he could stop it at any height he wanted.
He even luxuriously used a glass lampshade, which both increased brightness and ensured that the sparks and oil inside would not contaminate the drawings and models on the workbench.
He pulled out that parchment from his bosom, but this was not the original that Caesar showed him, but a copy he hastily copied. He held it in front of his eyes and examined it carefully over and over several times, making sure every detail was imprinted in his mind, before standing up and immersing the entire parchment in water. The charcoal pencil marks on it immediately blurred.
Not only that, he quickly took out scissors and cut the entire parchment to shreds, then set it aside to dry before throwing it into the fireplace—this was the best way to keep secrets.
So, where should he start?
Isaacites could not do any work on New Year or the Sabbath, but he could first simulate it in his mind.
Start with the syringe. The syringe was a small matter; after all, he had already made it before. In the Battle of the Sea of Galilee, the sharp needle that pierced Sultan Nur al-Din’s body was meticulously forged by him—only when forging it, he had not thought of using it to take someone’s life.
Making it again now would just be repeating the previous process, not difficult.
What originally gave Haridi inspiration was the hollow glass tubes used by Ancient Romans. They used them as tools to treat people’s cataracts by extraction.
Later, people also used animal bladders and reed tubes to make simple syringes for enemas. He had once seen someone use finer hollow bird bones and goose quills, but to use such a syringe to inject potion into a blood vessel, an wound large enough to accommodate the tube had to be made on the animal or person.
Although he had deliberately shown a look of admiration and even fear for Caesar’s ingenious idea before, in fact, he had already tried it. Otherwise, how could he know that the hollow arrow he shot would take Nur al-Din’s life?
Although he also knew that priests would certainly prefer not to hear that he used such a thing to take someone’s life, nor would they want to hear him say it was for saving lives.
If discovered, regardless of whether he confessed Caesar, there would only be two outcomes waiting for him: one was secret and swift execution, the other was execution after infinite torture.
It would depend on how much fear the churches harbored toward this strange treatment method. This fear might increase or decrease based on how much they could grasp. If they could grasp all or most of it, they would have the interest to give this Isaacite the most miserable punishment. If they grasped little, they would be eager to execute him to avoid this human calamity bringing more trouble.
The method Haridi used was almost the same as that used by the inventor from another world centuries later. He first cast an alloy rod, about the thickness of a little finger, with the outer wall polished very smooth.
Then he wrapped thin gold sheets around the outside of this metal rod, patiently hammering them bit by bit into shape, drew out the rod, placed the hollow tube on the stretching apparatus, and slowly stretched it longer.
During the stretching process, this hollow tube continuously lengthened and thinned—of course, there would be constant failures, either breaking or clogging, but after over a hundred failures, he finally obtained a barely passable hollow needle. This needle was almost no different from the one he used on Nur al-Din.
This was not the finished product. He first had to make a rough prototype of the entire apparatus to determine how to assemble them afterward.
The most difficult part was the liquid container and the pressure-applying part. Using an animal bladder was of course the simplest, but Caesar had already specified requirements: glass, gold, silver were all fine, but animal bladders could not be used.
He had no way to thoroughly disinfect animal bladders, nor to prevent impurities from entering the potion, and both could cause systemic infection, coagulation dysfunction, and multiple organ failure.
